U.S. Defends Desert Air Strike, Iraqis Say Wedding Hit

[BadGimp]

U.S. Defends Desert Air Strike, Iraqis Say Wedding Hit

1 hour, 16 minutes ago Add Top Stories
By Alastair Macdonald

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Grieving Iraqis said U.S. forces killed dozens of guests at a desert wedding but an American general insisted Thursday that the air strike had killed foreign guerrilla fighters and said "bad things happen in wars."

Images of dead women and children on Arab television were a new setback for a U.S. mission already beset by a scandal over torture in prisons, as President Bush (news - web sites) prepares this week to detail plans for handing limited sovereignty to Iraqis.

A U.S.-backed raid on the home and offices of Ahmad Chalabi, once the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s favorite Iraqi leader, blew into the open growing turbulence in the handover process. Chalabi said the Americans, who this week cut off funds to his party, were out to get him because he wanted more independence than was on offer.

An opinion poll found that

only 7 percent of Iraqis now viewed U.S. troops as "liberators," compared to 45 percent six months ago.

It was conducted by the Iraq (news - web sites) Center for Research and Strategic Studies in April, before pictures of soldiers abusing prisoners drove another wedge between Americans and Iraqis.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=2&u=/nm/20040520/ts_nm/iraq_dc
condt....................................

How do you defend the indefensible?

More Heatrs and Minds I guess.

[qanda]

1. Only 7% *before* the abuse photos????

My goodness, I wonder if the 7% are still with us. That's just terrible.

[mmm]

2. Bad enough that we are guilty, lying makes it 100 times worse

what a sad sad time to be a US citizen

[Just Me]

3. My trust has been repeatedly betrayed,...

,...am I suppose to believe anything that comes out of this misadministration along with its loyalists?

No. I am neither stupid or a glutton for abuse of my trust.

[fizzana]

4. On ABC this morning they quoted the military as saying that no

children were killed. They then showed video of children killed in the bombing.

Firstly, how the f*** can they claim with any certitude that no children were killed.

All their credibility has been shot and they just pile one lie on top of another.

[hadrons]

5. first it was "no air strike", now its "it wasn't a wedding party" ....

:eyes:

[damnraddem]

7. It wasn't a wedding party, it must have been an insurgent camp --

why just look at all the children they had at that camp!

But the best evidence is made up by those musicians -- obviously a military band.

[damnraddem]

6. Now strip your clothes off your hearts and minds and bend over ...

we're going to 'process' you for prison.

[primavera]

8. "Bad things happen in wars"?!

Well, hell, then why don't we just follow Ann Coulter's advice and murder everyone? Talk about giving oneself carte blanche to commit atrocities and then shrugging them off as "bad things" that are inevitable in war. How much more blase and cavalier to human suffering could this asshole be? Is he totally sociopathic?

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. and "there were more than 2 dozen military age males"

Jesus, man, how many weddings have you been to where there weren't 2 dozen military age males? The bridegroom, his friends, brothers, bride's brothers, cousins, maybe the generation up ...

[daleo]

10. General Mattis - "Bad things happen in wars"

That's why tens of millions of people around that world told you not to invade.

"Major General James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division which controls the area, told reporters that more than two dozen men of fighting age were among the dead."

So, 40-25=15. At least 15 women and children were killed. Now, the military is basically saying any male between 10 and 50 (their definition of men of military age during the Fallujah siege) is fair game to kill.

"How many people go to the middle of the desert 10 miles from the Syrian border to hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest civilization?" Mattis said in Falluja."

They may have thought there was less chance of being killed there, since Falluja hasn't exactly been the best place to avoid being killed by the U.S. military either. Besides, people hold weddings in all kinds of places. Mine was in Northern Ontario, far from civilization as Mattis would recognize it.

[Rex]

11. "Bad things happen in war."

I'm sure that's what Kissinger told people about Cambodia.

[leftchick]

12. Here is an AP article contrasting the Iraqi version of events......

Iraqis say U.S. attacked wedding party

By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI
The Associated Press
5/20/2004, 4:27 p.m. ET

RAMADI, Iraq (AP) — As survivors tell it, the wedding party was in full swing. The band was playing tribal music and the guests had just finished eating dinner when, at about 9 p.m., they heard the roar of U.S. warplanes. Fearing trouble, the revelers ended the festivities and went to bed.

About six hours later, the first bomb struck the tent.

"Mothers died with their children in their arms," said Madhi Nawaf, who survived the attack Wednesday in Mogr el-Deeb on the Syrian border. Up to 45 people died — mostly women and children from the Bou Fahad tribe.

"One of them was my daughter," Nawaf told The Associated Press. "I found her a few steps from the house, her 2-year-old son Raad in her arms. Her 1-year-old son, Raed, was lying nearby, missing his head."

<snip>
Ten miles from the Syrian border and 80 miles from the nearest city and a wedding party? Don't be naive," Marine Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis told reporters in Fallujah. "Plus, they had 30 males of military age with them. How many people go to the middle of the desert to have a wedding party?"

But members of the Bou Fahad tribe say they consider the border area part of their territory and follow their goats, sheep and cattle there to graze. They leave spacious homes in Ramadi and roam the desert, as far as 250 miles to the west, in the springtime.


http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/lateststories/index.ssf?/base/international-14/108508524430150.xml

:( Okay, I say the Iraqis once again are the more reliable source for information.

[TEXASYANKEE]

13. Spoken like a true redneck idiot.

<I mean no offense to rednecks>
"Ten miles from the Syrian border and 80 miles from the nearest city and a wedding party? Don't be naive," Marine Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis told reporters in Fallujah. "Plus, they had 30 males of military age with them. How many people go to the middle of the desert to have a wedding party?"

This sounds like someone who knows absolutely nothing about Iraq or the people who inhabit the region. When I say "redneck" I mean that he sounds like someone who, much like Shrub, did not travel or study about areas outside of his hometown. A limited worldview. An idiot.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

14. All Mattis knows about foreign countries is that he's been trained...

...to go anywhere and kill the inhabitants. Nothing else matters to this guy.

[MasonJar]

15. The military lies as much as the Bushies. So much for Seven

Days in May.

[Ripley]

16. This explains it all...

[trapper914]

17. Suspected

Kimmett says this was a suspected safe house. Why not get a little more evidence before blowing everything up?

They're pointing to the cash they found as evidence. It seemed like the number 1 million Iraqi dinars was mentioned in early reports. Back in April, that amounted to about $700 U.S. I'm sure that's a lot of money by Iraqi standards, but if this was a wedding (and a wedding singer was one of the dead), the money might have been for the newlyweds.